Campus Caper

Publication: HT Brunch

Published:  Ongoing Since April 2020

Introducing a column by a 19-year-old Indian student in the US, on the trials and tribulations of life at college

Bollywood Bookshelf: The book-loving funnybone

Publication: HT Brunch

Published:  Dec, 2018

Voracious reader Twinkle Khanna on being the ‘non Kindle’ girl and the one thing she has in common with Bridget Jones!

Bollywood Bookshelf: The books that shaped Saif Ali Khan’s thinking

Publication: HT Brunch

Published:  Dec, 2018

Saif Ali Khan reveals his love for Bertie Wooster, and says the movie of his that’d make a good book, is Cocktail!

Bollywood Bookshelf:  Reading between the lines with Karan Johar

Publication: HT Brunch

Published:  Nov, 2018 

The filmmaker reveals his love for The Fountainhead, and confesses his inability to complete the book that has cinema embedded in it: Jeffrey Archer’s Kane and Abel

Bollywood Bookshelf:  Rajkummar Rao gets booked

Publication: HT Brunch

Published:  Nov, 2018 

He didn’t shy away from playing the non-glamorous role of a human-rights lawyer in Shahid(2013), the fledgling government clerk who was hell-bent against communist rebels inNewton (2017) or a journalist in the film Aligarh (2016)

Bollywood Bookshelf: The books on Sonam Kapoor’s mind right now

Publication: HT Brunch

Published:  Oct, 2018 

A film set is always a tad chaotic, even more so with a random 17-year-old milling about. I’ve travelled to the set of The Zoya Factor to snatch a precious 10 minutes of Sonam Kapoor’s time off set, prepped with questions that will help readers get to know her and her bookshelf much better. I’m a little nervous. She’s appeared in numerous acclaimed films. She’s also a bit of a bookworm! She’s a classics lover, and eager to explore the newest books, and currently working on an enchanting book-to-movie adaptation.

Beauty is the reflection of your soul

Publication: ELLE The Conversation

Published:  Oct, 2018 

What really is beauty? And how does one perceive it? As debates rage around the inclusivity of it (or lack thereof), seven voices offer their insights on a term that has been most polarising this year.

Your time starts now! How not to worry too much about your exams

Publication: Hindustan Times

Published:  Oct 07, 2018 

I’ve heard exams compared to many things: too cold coffee, poisonous mosquitos, a porcupine that you go to pet but it stabs you in the hand (oddly specific, that last one). We’ve all been through them, we’ve all panicked about them, and we’ve pretty much collectively decided that we all hate them. We think of them as an amorphous beast, threatening to swallow us whole at the slightest stumble.

Our betraying tongues

Publication: Hindustan Times

Published:  Aug 25, 2018 

Our cultural identities are not mounds of putty, to be shaped and changed and reformed at our will. They are faded gemstones, smothered within us, waiting to be acknowledged

Sacred Games author Vikram Chandra interviewed by his niece

Publication: Hindustan Times

Published:  Jul 21, 2018 

Here’s the thing about being the niece of Vikram Chandra, the author of Sacred Games: Since you want to be a writer too, you get to interview your own uncle! His 900-page novel is now a digital show – the first Indian original series on Netflix, and HT Brunch suggested I put some interview questions to him. Here are excerpts, niece to uncle, writer to writer, Chopra to Chandra.

Reading into the minds of teenagers

Publication: Hindustan Times

Published:  Apr 02, 2018 

Libraries are wondrous places. The home of books, of inspired children; sanctuaries from the darkness outside that we spend most of our lives evading.

Monsters! A love story

Publication: Hindustan Times

Published:  Feb 24, 2018

“Mom,” I whisper, a sudden flush of excitement rising in me, “There’s a monster under my bed!”

She smiles, humouring me. She knows of the magic and monsters my childhood can conjure within our little world. “Oh, really? And what does he look like?”

Living the Harvard dream

Publication: Hindustan Times

Published:  Aug 26, 2017

Living at Harvard is an experience that changes you in a myriad of ways, so subtly that at first you will wonder whether you’re changing at all. Like a sand sculpture left to be shaped by the tide, slowly you learn to adapt to your surroundings, and you are shaped by the demands on your new-found independence.

When a millennial met a YouTube sensation

Publication: Hindustan Times

 Published:  May 13, 2017

In a quirky twist, HT Brunch got Zuni Chopra, 16, to interview YouTube sensation Lilly ‘Superwoman’ Singh... The conversation offers a ringside view into the minds everyone wants to get into.

My Mumbai through a looking glass

Publication: Hindustan Times

Published:  Mar 12, 2017

My glasses have bothered me since the day I got them. Agreed, that day was six years ago, but they are as much of a nuisance now as they were on that fateful, sunny Monday morning when they wrestled onto my face and sat there like an overgrown wart.

Confessions of a modern teenager

Publication: Vogue India

Published:  Apr 15, 2016

Kicking off my black school shoes, I push the door open. I can smell food. The scent of curry wafts from the kitchen. That must be our dinner tonight. “Hey, mom!” I call out. “I’m home.”